Is being a Healer in groups too hard?

Aeaeren

Other (please comment)

Ur-Quan wrote: »

kitsinni wrote: »

You see a lot of people saying "People need to learn to stand near me as a healer" .. "People need to dodge roll and stay out of AoE" .. in a lot of fights these can't both happen. Healers can't expect people to stay out of AoE and always be near them it just doesn't work that way.

That's true. People need to be aware of the AOEs and when to block and when to keep close to the healer, but you can't necessarily do all of those things all of the time. It's all about situational awareness and figuring out what your priorities have to be in any given situation to keep yourself alive and allow the healer to help keep you alive.

Exactly, the team has to work together. Some stuff you can heal right through and no need to get out of the red stuff, other stuff the healer needs to move to the team to pop the Ult ect. It's all about situation and expectations. Everyone has to work together and be responsible for the overall success of the team.

UrQuan

Other players are too hard to heal

Aeaeren wrote: »

Ur-Quan wrote: »

kitsinni wrote: »

You see a lot of people saying "People need to learn to stand near me as a healer" .. "People need to dodge roll and stay out of AoE" .. in a lot of fights these can't both happen. Healers can't expect people to stay out of AoE and always be near them it just doesn't work that way.

That's true. People need to be aware of the AOEs and when to block and when to keep close to the healer, but you can't necessarily do all of those things all of the time. It's all about situational awareness and figuring out what your priorities have to be in any given situation to keep yourself alive and allow the healer to help keep you alive.

Exactly, the team has to work together. Some stuff you can heal right through and no need to get out of the red stuff, other stuff the healer needs to move to the team to pop the Ult ect. It's all about situation and expectations. Everyone has to work together and be responsible for the overall success of the team.

Agreed. I really think everyone should do at least a couple of raids/dungeons as each role. IMO It gives you a much better idea of the types of things you need to be doing in your own chosen role when you see things through the eyes of a different role. That way everyone can work together better.

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

Its a combination of things.

First off, no, its not hard to heal. It really isnt in any game.

The challenge almost always falls into other players.

There are times when the healer is just undergeared yes. Most of the time, Ive found death to be the result of players standing in bad stuff and refusing to move, or not knowing what to expect and getting silence when they ask.

I lose a lot of melee to red.

Ive gotten killed after asking how this fight works, getting silence and then tank pulls.

I think folks are used to other games where the healer can literally carry the entire group through things.

Too much reliance on the healer as a crutch.

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

Kulrig wrote: »

It depends on the group, really.

I went through a group dungeon the other day with two tanks fighting over aggro, neither seemed to know the other was also trying to tank. That actually worked out quite well, especially since they were kind enough to stay near each other so all of my heals could affect everyone (once the NB archer figured out he should stand in front of me, anyway).

I did a Dolmen earlier today in Vet Glenumbra, and everyone ran around like a chicken with their head cut off whenever anything was attacking them. There were eight people at the Dolmen including myself, and only two decided it would be a good idea to stay near the healer; the rest ran off every which way and took an "every man for himself" attitude which meant I had to heal myself a lot more than usual (healer tank ftw). And of course I was the only person with a resto staff, none of the numerous Templars seemed to know how to find their Restoring Light tree, nor did the DKs have any idea that Dragon Blood exists.

The more I do the world bosses, dungeons and dolmens in vet content, the more I wish that "everyone uses light armor and resto staff" was true.

Dragon blood + many of that trees passive + heavy armor = the dk is getting a huge bonus to healing recieved. So nice

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

Ur-Quan wrote: »

My experience using my healer alts has taught me a lot about how to tank. I don't mean that I've been tanking with my healer, but as a healer it's a lot easier to see what tanks are doing wrong than it is to see the same thing when you're a tank.

I was playing with one of my tank alts in a PUG the other day in a group dungeon, and frankly my tanking skill was the only reason we were able to beat that final boss (we didn't really have a healer - we had me and 3 DPS, one of whom was trying to take on the healer role out of necessity, and he did a decent job considering he really wasn't built as a healer). Almost everything I learned about how to tank came from my observations of both good and bad tanks as a healer. So being a healer made me a way better tank.

I guess my point is that being a healer is incredibly difficult if your group doesn't really understand the need to mitigate damage and not rely entirely on the healer for healing (or if they're just not good at it). If your group does understand that, and they're good at it, then being a healer is much much easier.

I find having been a healer for over 10 years makes me dps and tank smarter.

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

Kulrig wrote: »

Nukeyak wrote: »

It's not whack mole or UI focussed.

Probably my favorite aspect of healing in this game, along with the ability to regenerate mana at a fairly decent rate. Having everyone's health bar above their head lets me focus on where they're at and what's hitting them, rather than hoping against hope that the bar I'm refilling isn't standing in fire.

Much better than, say...

I have no words for how awful that UI is.

I healed heroic raids with *much* less. Thats asinine.

And most of it was mouseover heals with the tank hard targeted, offtank focused and friendly healthbars up.

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

ArRashid wrote: »

What a terrible pile of addons!
Man, you need to learn to use Blizzard's own UI..
Deadly Boss Mod (for awareness) and Bartender4 (for skill bars) are the only addons anyone in WoW needs. Even healer - I know, I was one till Blizzard found it funny to bombard my class with about 14 waves of nerfs.. and then a rework to most heals, destroying all hopes of synergies, leaving you with generic heals and a few unique ones on 30+ second CDs.. oh well, ZOS is doing the same to DK now, just not to heals.

The rest (damage meters, loot tables, minimap addons, chat addons and everything else) is just there to make things prettier.. which, honestly, totally failed in your case.

My vision doesnt work well with Blizzards UI, which isnt designed to be functional, only pretty.

ElvUI complete UI replacement and Grid for raid frames. Debuff lights up square's border, red means aggro. Little corner indicators for my hots. Done.

Recount is mostly for personal reference and DBM is for audio alerts because my vision is poor.

Sakiri

Other (please comment)

Kulrig wrote: »

@ArRashid That was a random screenshot pulled from a google search of "healing in WoW", not one from a raid I was in. I used the stock UI myself when I healed back in Wrath, and even then I played Disc so I was just a tank healer (and the occasional 5 man). When I tried my hand at raid healing, having an extra 20 bars to worry about made it so that I had no time to look at the action, just constantly scanning the health bars. It was even worse when I tried AV or IoC, fourty bars clogging up my screen and typically only a quarter of those were in range.

Then along came Cata, and yeah... I gave up on Blizz allowing healers to be anything more than a glorified soft enrage timer. Haven't tried healing recently, partly because they want to change how healers work every expansion without thinking about how to make it fun.

I actually liked the Cata changes.

It let me do what this game doesn't really let me do... not heal stupid.

If you can't not stand in the bad stuff, I don't want to waste my magicka on you. It's cheaper to rez you.

And my UI wasn't terrible. I could see everything I needed to.

Heroic Horridon(Throne of Thunder, 5.2 patch)

http://i.imgur.com/CdpGJm9.jpg

All I could find of actual action shots with spell effects was Megaera trash, raid finder.

http://i.imgur.com/jFlqYl4.jpg

Those green things to the sides of me are default UI.

EQBallzz

Other (please comment)

Healing isn't too hard if people don't get too spread out and dodge/avoid dmg reasonably well (and you have an actual tank). The healing difficulty goes up exponentially from there as those things start to fall apart but that is not the healer's fault.

wrlifeboil

Much of the healing in this game is aoe or autotarget. That makes healing easy-mode in all but the most challenging fights once you have the right skills and gear.

What makes a good healer in this game is how much dps they contribute while keeping the group alive, themselves included.

OrangeTheCat

Other (please comment)

I find healing fun and easy. My sorc is both DPS and Heal. I don't think the "dedicated healer" thing is necessary in ESO so players can do both well and people who do the "dedicated healer" thing are really missing out on the other half of what ESO offers.

Having said that, healing is easy in ESO (at least for resto staff heals) because the heals are mostly aoe and targeting is not entirely under the control of the healer. It's also easy because the heals tend towards HOTs. It's also easy because the real healing is in the form of damage mitigation (do the other players block? Dodge? Get out of the red circles in time?). If the party wipes and the party consists of people all the right level for the dungeon, the wipe is due to a failure of damage mitigation, not the healer (unless the healer was truly not doing anything of course).

traigusb14_ESO2

Other players are too hard to heal

People don't know Templar heals well, or some of the lest popular resto ones. Did a Dolmen last night Vet 8 zone. Everyone was headless chicken dpsing.

Throw down a massive HoT ground circle and everyone runs out of it (no red from baddies btw). Also use my health/stam regen AOE a lot and people are surprised.

People are just used to someone (or 3) spamming resto staff heals or bubbles (some people also think this is skilled healing). Even a lot of tanks really aren't set up for tanking (not enough STA and/or block reduction to take more than 4 hits). I can stand in the middle of 4 VR8 melee mobs almost indefinitely without using a potion (casters are something else) and melee them to death with my templar when I'm set for tanking.

If you can get people to stand still before a dungeon boss fight and go. "I'm going to cast X that does Y." And they say they will "cast A that does B." You can get a plan together, and then heals can be overkill.

A bunch of rune spamming dps freaks bunny hopping a dolmen, or worse a world boss with complicated mechanics.. all bets are off.

crislevin

Other players are too hard to heal

Whatever your own class is, tank and dps may want to try temp for a bit, or research a bit, just get to know visually the effects of the spells.

The point is you won't run opposite to where the healing effect is, and get into the healing range of ROP or other AoE healing when they are coming. ROP heals 2k+ in 4-6 sec, its probably the safest place in battle, don't run away.